2.4.2 Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

if nuclear power produces an even more significant proportion of world energy, the safeguarding of weapons-usable materials will become still more daunting

Today, nuclear power accounts for about 5% of the world’s energy, and about 15% of its electricity. Nuclear energy could replace baseload fossil fuel electricity generation in many parts of the world, if generally acceptable responses can be found to concerns such as reactor safety, radioactive-waste transport and disposal, and proliferation.

Nuclear power poses security challenges because of the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Nuclear power programmes require national cadres of nuclear scientists and technicians, a network of research facilities, research reactors and laboratories - all indispensable to a nuclear weapons programme. But the most direct connection between civilian nuclear power programs to produce electricity and nuclear weapons proliferation - the (nuclear) energy-nuclear weapons nexus - is through the production and use of fissile materials, plutonium and highly-enriched uranium, which could be used in nuclear weapons.

For these reasons the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was developed (and there are now 175 parties to the Treaty as of 5 November 1996) to provide a system of safeguards aimed at assuring that civilian nuclear power programs not be used to divert nuclear materials to weapon usage. Unfortunately, safeguards are an imperfect barrier to proliferation.

If in the long run nuclear power comes to produce an even more significant proportion of world energy, the safeguarding of weapons-usable materials will become still more daunting. A nuclear explosive device can be constructed with less than 10 kg of plutonium, while a 1000 MW power reactor produces more than 200 kg of plutonium per year. It is difficult to imagine human institutions capable of safeguarding these plutonium flows against occasional diversions of significant quantities to nuclear weapons.